Santantadibe

Shavaughn and I went across to NG32, along the Santantadibe, for a couple of nights this week. From plotting the GPS fixes onto Google Earth, it looked like most of them were on the western side of the channel, so we first drove to the Thamalakane crossing. As soon as I caught sight of it I doubted our chances of crossing. We found a truck stopped in the water at the crossing point and very few tracks going into the water. An old man was on the other side and he waded across to show us just how deep it was. I tried to walk across at a shallower section, but the water was higher than my waist. I know I am not the tallest person, but I thought that was still a bit high for my car.

So we headed back up to the gate on the eastern side of the Santantadibe, without crossing any of the anticipated water. We followed a road along the edge of the floodplains and came across a herd of about 300 buff in lovely open grassland. At first we thought they were going to run for it, but they relaxed very quickly. In fact as we drove towards them, they stopped walking away from us and turned to walk right past us, about 50 m away, in a slow manner, which was perfect for working out age and sex ratios. I got quite a high percentage of the herd, and was then able to collect fresh faeces from the ground while they watched. By this time the sun was setting, so we drove a km or so and camped. The wind was howling that night, but it stopped eventually and we were able to get some sleep.

The next morning, we started sampling points used by Bianca. It was relatively easy to drive around and most of the points turned out to be on that side of the channel (not quite sure how, but will have another look at Google Earth) and quite easily accessible. We got ten points done before lunch and a further 7 after lunch. We found a lovely campsite in front of floodplains with pools. The next morning there were waterbuck and zebra splashing through the floodplains.

We continued sampling, but by that time had almost reached our quota of samples for the area. I want to avoid oversampling areas on trips, as that leads to a bias in the data. We found a few more sites, bringing our total up to 20. The second to last one was in riparian woodland, and I managed not to see a log that unfortunately cracked my windscreen. I am still upset with myself about this, and will endeavour to be much more careful in future.

I radio-ed camp and they kindly agreed to look up the latest fix for Bianca. I plotted it on my GPS and realised that she was on the other side of the channel. I think that there is a crossing for the Santantadibe, but I was not sure where it was, so decided to leave Bianca for next time. We obtained population dynamics data from the other herd, and I now know which coordinates will mean that Bianca is on the east of the channel.

We drove back to camp and arrived just in time for the end of lunch. It was a short trip, but would have been highly satisfactory if not for the windscreen incident.